


Avengerian Knot

by PurpleMoon3



Series: dresden_kink fills [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Community: dresden_kink, Curses, Gen, Harry needs a TV that works, Humor, Magic makes you Drunk, Poor Disguises, Steve's Morals are not your Morals, The Usefullness of Phonebooks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:50:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleMoon3/pseuds/PurpleMoon3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers, minus Thor who has awesome godly immunity, are struck with a TERRIBLE CURSE that prevents them from communicating!  Their word's are salad, meaning lost, and SHIELD is at loss.  They've been stabled until a cure can be found.</p><p>Or at least until Steve finds the lone Phonebook of Stark Tower, and decides to hire a professional.  Enter Harry Dresden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Taken and polished from Dresden Kink. Original prompt: [Here](http://dresden-kink.dreamwidth.org/3344.html?thread=3748880#cmt3748880)

It was small and stupid, a spur of the moment curse rather than anything premeditated and complicated, but in the simplicity was the genius. There was no single thread of magic to pull and unravel the weaving, but a massive tangle of ill will that just sunk its claws in with every tug and pull. Nat and Tony were hardest hit by the curse, the Widow because she prided herself on her multilingual capabilities and ferreting out information in delicate turns of phrase; and the Iron Man because not being able to vocally communicate his superiority took half the fun out of his day. Thor's inbuilt Universal Translator had made him immune to the magical aphasia, and it was with his help that SHIELD was attempting to develop cures and contact curse-breakers.  
  
All of the Avengers had been respectfully asked to remain in the tower until their speech faculties had been restored. Steve was sitting in the living room attempting to sketch passed out Clint, and failing.  He couldn't concentrate. Steve disliked sitting around, useless. He'd spent seventy years sleeping in the ice. He wanted to _do_ something. Go somewhere. Even if the world had changed, he needed to get back on the horse.   
  
Steve eyed the dusty phonebook that had been left out, almost an afterthought, on the little table by an antique looking phone.  Yellowed with age, rotary dial, Tony had probably bought it as a conversation peiece.   
  
He sat his pencils down and picked up the heavy book. _This_ was what the world was supposed to be, he thought, there was solidity in books. Permanency. Not the easily crushed gizmos and gadgets that Howard's son preferred. Even if they were... what was the word... _cool_.  
  
Steve flipped absently through the pages, squinting to make out letters that kept trying to shift under his eyes, wondering what kind of professions existed in the future. He paused at shortly after wondering just how many window washers a city needed. The entry was small, framed with a thick black border seperating it from the rest, and to the point.   
  


  
**Harry Dresden - Wizard**   
**Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.**   
**No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment.**   


  
  
It came with an office address in Chicago.   
  
While SHIELD was scrambling to locate a missing Captain America, utilizing their facial recognition software and tapping into city wide security cameras while stationing agents at the airports and bus terminals, Steve Rogers donned a fake mustache, Fedora, and took a train.

* * *

  
I was walking up the stairs to my office when I nearly tripped over a man who had the right build -but not the face- to be one of Marcone's men. He startled awake and stared at me, gaze going over my duster like a professional checking for weapons, and gave a shy smile as he took in my boots and staff.  
  
"The pigeon caws at lunch, gateway orange moon." He held out his hand in greeting. I eyed him back, but it was hard to avoid his baby-blues when he kept trying to make eye contact. He raised his eyebrows with such sincerity I shook his hand, and shivered at the dull echo of Talent. A minor practitioner, maybe? "Alleyway dolphin greenback!"  
  
Unless his speech was some sort of code I missed the memo for, surprisingly not all that unlikely, Friday Night Lights was my next client.   
  
"So." I waved him into my office. "I'm guessing you got cursed. Since you've obviously got a speech issue, I'm going to ask a series of yes or no questions. Feel free to nod."  
  
"Oidvey!"  
  
"I said nod."  
  
The guy blushed and nodded. I pulled a steno pad from under a stack of junk mail and fished a chewed pencil out of my desk.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that flippant line in _The Avengers_ where Steve is all 'he might have a magic staff but works just like a Hydra weapon'? In my headcanon Steve totally believes in fairies and... well... Prohibition was a bitch.

What we had here, besides a failure to communicate, was one of the most messy curses I had ever seen. It was also the most powerful. Whoever cast it, and my client confessed to know the culprit while lacking the ability to point him out, wasn't mortal. I've known my fair share of sidhe -big and little folk, summer and winter courts- but there was something about the _flavor_ of this particular curse that hinted more to the wyld side. Besides, I couldn't see everybody's favorite line backer pissing one of the High Sidhe off enough to merit such retaliation. He had been the epitome of politeness, and not in the vaguely threatening way of Chicago's own Kingpin but in the manner of habitual wall flowers everywhere.  
  
Speaking of mafia Don's, after we squeezed into the Blue Beetle and headed over to my apartment we found a non-Mouse guard dog lying in wait.  
  
"Hello, Cujo. Out for walkies?" I asked while searching my extensive pockets -part of being a wizard, naturally- for my keyring. The protective warding on my door hummed a bit as I temporarily deactivated them, and the way blondie's head swung toward me said something about how acute his hearing was.  
  
Hendricks didn't look at me, well he didn't _look_ look at me, just kinda kept that peripheral awareness all really good bodyguards did, and chose to stare at my client. "Dresden. Do you have _any_ idea who this is?"  
  
My client blushed again and muttered something that was probably supposed to be disarming but came out as, "Sushi on rye, lakeside."  
  
I shoulder-checked the door and stepped in. "This is Mr. Rogers." I managed to get that after my client snapped his fingers and doodled the image of my favorite sweater-wearing childhood hero. It had actually been a really good likeness. "And if all goes well, my rent for the next four months."  
  
I think I actually managed to break Cujo's brain, because he finally tore his gaze away from my blushing paycheck to _stare_ stare at me.  
  
"Only you, Dresden. Only you." Hendricks muttered as he walked back to his kennel, and I had to wonder if my client was some kind of undercover movie star or something. It wasn't like I had a TV, and if he was rich and famous at least I wouldn't have to worry about the check bouncing.

* * *

  
Steve looked around the small basement apartment, and took off his shoes. Then he curled his toes into one of the many rugs and grinned at the mountain of a dog that only moments ago had blended seamlessly into the carpet. When he was kid, skinny and sick, Steve hadn't been able to keep a pet. He petted the ironically named Mouse enthusiastically.  
  
"Right." Mr. Dresden huffed, clearly disturbed by the presence of the obvious enforcer. He threw his coat over a beat up old couch and shrugged on a bathrobe. "I gotta… do wizard-y things. I'll be in my lab. If you need anything, there's beer in the ice-box and cornflakes in the cupboard. And a cat… somewhere..."  
  
Steve watched him disappear down a trapdoor, then wandered over to the kitchen. There was an ice box. An actual _ice box_ with _ice_ , and combined with the fireplace and the second-hand squeezed in furniture the whole apartment felt… nice. Like coming home. It wasn't a fake world set up to pacify, but a retreat from the pressures of the day. Steve pulled open the ice box.  
  
Very, very carefully he reached in and tried to take out a bottle of microbrew without disturbing the tiny, winged, blue haired person that was lightly snoring a top a Tupperware container of lasagna. Bucky's grandmother used to leave out little saucers of milk when she could. For luck, so she said.  
  
Mrs. Barnes had always known when the cops were going to be cracking down on the speak-easies, as if she had access to information no one else had, and acted accordingly.  
  
Steve couldn't keep the stupid grin that he shared with the dog off of his face as he drank the beer. 

* * *

  
Every wizard brews differently, because each ingredient can have different meanings for different people. This is doubly true when mixing potions for particular people. "So, I'm thinking we'll start with champagne for the base, for the ease of speech."  
  
"You mean drunken rambling-"  
  
"Not helping, Bob."  
  
"-Not that Be-All-That-You-Can-Be upstairs would have that sort of problem-"  
  
"Bob!"  
  
Bob's skull wobbled in my direction as I lit the burner under my dutch oven. Normally I'd use the remainders of a chemistry set for this sort of thing, but I'd gotten the idea there were others similarly effected but less open-minded than my client. If I timed it right, I should be able to store the incomplete potion until I'd reached the other victims.  
  
"Have you _seen_ his aura, boss? That is the kind of thing wet-dreams are made of."  
  
"I thought you were a ladies skull, Bob." I tore a glossy cell phone ad out of a magazine and dropped the shreadedings into my pot of steaming bubbly. There wasn't any one weakness in the curse that I, or my spirit possessed cat could espy on my client, so I'd have to do the equivalent of driving a car through it. Without a car. Luckily, raw power was something of a speciality of mine and with a potion as the delivery system I felt like a regular mad scientist.  
  
But only a little bit.  
  
"You're going to need something to balance out the coal." Bob mentioned as I heated up the Touch component of the curse-breaking potion. "I suggest honey, if you've got any left, wouldn't want Captain America stuck with a potty-mouth on TV."  
  
Bob had a point. Honey would make an excellent addition for Taste. "So he looks a _little_ like the old comics. He can't be _the_ Captain. Guy'd have to be, like, ninety or something. No one human ages that well."  
  
"Maybe it's a government conspiracy." Surprisingly, Bob's voice lacked the usual levity. My lips pressed together as I poured in the Sound of a needle on a record player. Government tangling with spell casters? Last time something like that happened I'd had to go up against a Loup-Garou being framed for murder, and it hadn't ended pretty. There was a reason the Fae tended to stick to the shadows and accords. In a one-on-one confrontation supernaturals tended to kick mortal ass. They were generally bigger, stronger, and faster than us with the magical equivalents of howitzers built in to them. But as a group, with cold iron at hand, imagination, and the sort of focused determination that started holy wars we humans were walking nukes just waiting to go off.  
  
I cheated a bit on Smell with an old scratch-and-sniff, then mixed in a cheap pocket dictionary for Mind. It was almost done, and what had originally been a pale yellow liquid had turned the red of tomato soup. I poured a portion into a beaker and marched up the ladder back upstairs. I still needed a donation from my client to both personalize the potion for an extra kick, and fulfill the Spirit bit.  
  
I did not expect to find my client sitting at the table, five empty beer bottles beside him, my fairy-sized tea set out, and a five-way game of Monopoly. Mr. Rogers was the cannon. Toot had taken over all the red spaces, and was little horsey dude. Two more little folk -the Guard that I had recently been hearing about, I suspected- were playing as the race car and the top hat. Mouse, who couldn't actually handle the money and so needed Mr. Roger's help, was the scotty dog.  
  
Mouse was winning. He'd used his ruthless animal instinct and gotten control of Park Place and Marvin Gardens.  
  
Welcome to my life.  
  
"I, uh, need some hair." I gestured vaguely to the bubbling beaker. Mr. Rogers, seemingly heedless of what I could potentially do with it, plucked a few out and handed them over. I dropped them into the soup, we all watched it turn the kind of gold you expect to see on silk shirts, and I handed it over. "You just drink it."  
  
He sniffed it first -it smelled like crap but all my potions did- and as if to say _Really, dude, you expect me to drink this?_ he looked at me. I didn't look away in time, and our eyes met. I fell into a sea of blue, and red, and white.  
  
They say the eyes are the window to the soul, and for the most part they would be right, but Mr. Roger's were a window to the past. And it was a _good_ past. Terrifying, but good and true and real and in the center of it all was a skinny little boy holding all the cards to his chest as bombs exploded and he bluffed them all.  
  
Captain Fucking America was in my den, playing Monopoly with my fairies, drinking my beer.  
  
And John Marcone knew it.  
  
I fainted.  
  
Luckily I had the biggest boy scout on the planet on hand to catch me.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony didn't like being woken up at godly hours of the morning. He would have called them ungodly if not for the resident god that -barring internal injuries or life-sucking enchantments- literally rose with the sun. So while Thor was up and about and smacking helpless SHIELD trainee's around with the currently AWOL Captain America, Tony Stark normally had JARVIS use space age -or should that be _Stark_ age, he'd have Pepper look into it- technology to block out any and all sunlight, sound, and waking-type things short of an actual alien/demon invasion/apocalypse. At least until noon.  
  
Which was why he wanted to know what could possibly be so important that JARVIS permitted a call to go through to his cell and ring repeatedly in his ear. He fumbled for a moment as he fought with the sheets pinning his arms to side, then tapped his phone and croaked, "Chaka?"  
  
"Mr. Stark." The voice on the other end was calm, deep, and cultured. He would even go so far as to say genteel. But there was the sound of clinking beer bottles -it was a very distinctive sound, one that Tony was intimately familiar with- in the background amid giggling whispers and child-like cheers.  
  
"AAARSIV."  
  
JARVIS' response was clear. Tony had never been more grateful for his own programming brilliance than now. "Attempting to track now, sir."  
  
"No need, Mr. Stark. Mr. Rogers is unable to come to the phone at the moment. An unforeseen side effect of the cure appears to be a bit of… inebriation. Which he seems to be enjoying. Rest assured the good Captain is perfectly safe with us."  
  
Tony death squinted at his phone. He wanted to know who had the Cap, and how they got Tony's personal number. Not even Steve knew it, mostly because he stuck to the speed dial Tony had set him up with when he used it at all, and there were certain safeguards on the Avengers' Starkphones to keep them from being such a liability. "Ishkay, _catspaw_."  
  
"From your tone I will assume that was supposed to be a threat?"  
  
Tony grunted.  
  
"Trace… interrupted, sir." Tony blinked at the obvious confusion in his AI's voice. He hadn't thought JARVIS was _capable_ of confusion.  
  
"As I understand it Mr. Rogers has already negotiated the services of a third party. Please be sober and ready to meet in Central Park at… 2pm? Yes. 2 sharp. You are welcome to bring those who are similarly afflicted, but it would be preferred to keep the party small. It has been a pleasure speaking with you, Mr. Stark."  
  
The sharp click of a flip phone being snapped shut ended the call. Tony frowned. How did someone using a god-damned _flip phone_ throw off JARVIS?  
  
"AAAAAAR!"  
  
"Vocal recognition search complete." Tony waved for JARVIS to continue. "76% Match to Johnny Marcone, self-made millionaire based out of Chicago known for his philanthropy toward children's causes. CIA files have him flagged as the possible Don of the Chicago Outfit."  
  
"Fish quintessence?"  
  
"While the CIA suspects _Gentleman Johnny_ of expanding his territories, he has not merited more than a small mention in SHIELD's database due to the local nature of his activities. As you know, SHIELD is more concerned with more international, intergalatic threats."  
  
Tony fumbled for the bottle of of scotch and tried to figure out why Steve was hanging out with gangsters. Maybe it was a 40's thing.

 

* * *

  
John had, of course, been aware of the very likely possibility of extraterrestrial existence. The very definition of alien was _foreign_ or _strange_. By that definition all magically inclined persons and beings from the Nevernever were aliens, even if most lacked the bulbous heads and black eyes of the classic Roswell Grey.  
  
Ms. Guard could neither confirm nor deny if UFO sightings had anything to do with Faery Politics, but had admitted that they were something Oberon might be inclined to engage in.  
  
So when his network noticed an unusual restlessness in the more esoteric inhabitants of his Barony and the Nevernever seemed to be in a state of odd calm he very reasonably asked Ms. Guard to provide rune-etched bullets for his more elite enforcers. She complied with minimal fuss. When the skies over New York opened up, Marcone was prepared to fight for his city.  
  
But it hadn't come to that.  
  
Sometimes, very rarely, good things did happen. These were called Miracles.  
  
But Marcone was a practical man and was considering the purchase of his own tactical nukes -magical and mundane- just in case some Other with an identity crisis tried to bring an army into _his_ territory.  
  
Besides, he was fairly certain that the White God if not outright hated him (the fact he hadn't been smote where he stood lent credence to that) was fairly ambivalent about his fate. But there was one little matter he still had to take care of… tit for tat, after all.  
  
"Mr. Rogers." Marcone turned back to one of his childhood heroes. The reason he had enlisted, once upon a time.  
  
"Steeeeeve." Steve Rogers slurred happily from the table as a tiny wild fae smaller than Marcone's fist attempted to clamber atop the blonde man's head. The normally quiet and Neutral McAnally's had been turned into a temporary sight of revelry. Any excuse to party, he supposed. " _Mr. Rogers_ makes it sound like I'm in trouble…"  
  
"You are currently absent without leave." Marcone felt compelled to point out. Steve waved a hand negligently and nearly knocked over a bottle of Mac's brew.  
  
"Pssssh. What are they going to do? Ground me? I'm a, a, a grown man. Fury ain't my mother."  
  
Fury. It had been more difficult than expected to retrieve information on the mysterious Director of SHIELD. Marcone filed the name away for later.  
  
"Be that as it may, would you sign these, please?"  
  
Captain America, even if he was wearing loose fitting jeans, flannel, and dripping in faeries, smiled and lit up the room. He took the marker and very carefully, very seriously signed his name on the mint condition comic book, fingers lingering wistfully on the cartoon caricature of one James 'Bucky' Barnes. "Bucky and me grew up around speak easies. We were too small to do much, but Aunt Clara let us keep watch when new shipments came in."  
  
Dresden walked in through the door, shook off snow that had no business being present in the middle of summer, and ran a hand through his messy hair. "The path through Winter should be clear, but if we want to make it by two we should go now…"  
  
Dresden trailed off as Steve grinned like a kid in his first candy store, blue eyes sparkling through their drunken haze. "We're going to Neverland!"

 

* * *

  
With the knowledge of Tony's caller being a suspected -More like known, but there was never any hard evidence to put him away and the Gentlemen's people had the kind of lips-sealed loyalty not seen in Organizations since Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano ratted to the FBI.- Crime Boss several flags were raised, and protocols activated. First, John Marcone suddenly jumped up several degrees of threat levels in the SHIELD criminal database. Second, Fury was on the war path like a mother hen and had everyone kitted out with the most advanced microscopic microphones and cameras. The park was cleared and then seeded with undercover agents watching every possible entrance.  
  
Clint cradled his bow, Tony was walking back and forth while messing with his bracelets, and the Black Widow stood in a simple sundress that hid the holsters strapped to her thighs. Everyone was nervous.  
  
Doubly so when the air _boiled_ , and then split in half like someone had just sliced the fabric of reality in two and snowflakes were hitting green, green grass.  
  
"Hi, Tony!" Steve called cheerily, cheeks rosey-red as he jumped out of the impossible hole and unzipped his parka. "Clint. Nat."  
  
 _He was speaking normally._ WTF?!?!  
  
An urban cowboy followed him out, a glowing bracelet held defensively as he took in Clint's arrow and Natasha's guns. Oddly, he seemed more concerned about the arrow.  Something in his pockets clinked. "Okay. I got more three doses of magical Speak-Easy with me, and they were a _bitch_ to brew. So, which one of you has my check?"  
  
Steve frowned at them like they'd just killed the Easter Bunny until they lowered their weapons. Tony tried to say something about credit cards that had the cowboy frowning. Later, when all was said and done and Fury was ranting about the probable EMP generator and demanding an explanation Steve just shrugged. "He's in the book."  
  
(No one questioned it when Steve started leaving out saucers of milk on the balconies, or asked that next time they ordered pizza it was 100% organic. Things were easier that way.)

 

* * *

  
"So." A voice commented in a room lit by a fire. "How much you want to bet that Erskine was a wizard and the _Super Serum_ was a magic potion? Those effects were pretty drastic, and no one's been able to replicate the result since."  
  
"Too obvious, no bet. But how much you willing to stake on the Cap becoming a minor god? He was attracting fae like honey does bears. A couple more decades of _belief_ to shore him up and… who knows? The personification of America itself… he's already come back from the dead, a few more miracles and he'll be a shoe-in."  
  
"Someone's been watching too much _Hetalia_."  
  
Mouse snorted a doggy snort and stretched, leaving Mister Jormungand to resume his musings on the nature of the universe as he lay in wait for the heavy steel door to open and a pair of shins to reveal themselves.


End file.
